If you’ re looking for a great vacation to take the kids on this summer, consider a family cruise. There are several cruise liners sailing out of Galveston, which is about a five hour drive from Johnson County.
My husband and I have been on two cruises— both to Cozumel and Progreso so we wanted our girls to experience another country and see what a treat it can be to live on a ship for a week.
So mid-April we trekked to Galveston and journeyed aboard the Carnival Breeze. It has 13 decks and can accommodate 3,690 passengers. Judging by the amount of people on the deck for the welcome aboard party it was pretty full.
One of the best perks about cruising is unlimited, all-you-can-eat food options. As soon as we dropped our carry-on luggage in our rooms, the girls changed into their suits, grabbed ice cream and jumped in the pool. I headed for the Pizza Pirate, because they have the most delicious thin crust pizza in all different flavors that I love.
If you go on a cruise, be sure to attend the Welcome Aboard show to hear all about what to expect, especially if it’ s your first one. You get to meet the cruise director and they do all sorts of giveaways for things like free excursions and gift certificates to the shops on board.
My favorite animals are dolphins so when my husband and I went on our first cruise to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary I knew I wanted to swim with dolphins. We had so much fun
20 Community Life
STORY AND PHOTOS BY Monica Faram
doing that I knew I wanted to go again so my girls could experience it as well.
That’ s the excursion we purchased to do in Cozumel, our first port stop. As luck would have it we ended up with the best animal guide, who had the dolphins doing all sorts of tricks like giving high-fives and singing. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
If dolphins aren’ t your sort of thing, there are tons of other excursion options— food and wine tours, ATV rentals, historical ruins tours and so much
more. If you don’ t want to go on an excursion, Cozumel also has wonderful shopping and a beautiful beach area where you can relax and chill.
While docked in Cozumel, there were also Royal Caribbean and Holland America ships. That was really neat because we got to meet people from all over the world.
Our second port city of Progreso isn’ t nearly as nice as Cozumel, but we got off to do some more shopping. We dropped a few bucks in a jar so we could